My Grocery Diet Experiment: Days 2 & 3
Again, I’m blown away by the outpouring of support and excitement about this grocery diet experiment of mine. While I’ve long known from the business side of this magazine that lots of people around the world do, in fact, read Shoestring, yesterday was the first time I knew for sure, thanks to all their Facebook comments, that my friends and family do, too, which was a big warm fuzzy. (Maybe I should’ve embraced this personal blogging thing years ago — old habits die hard, right journos? It’s just so weird talking about yourself in the first person — but I digress…)
So, what’s happened over the last two days?
NOSHED
Wednesday started out great, healthy, and early — I was on the grind by 7 a.m. — but since I didn’t get home from the office until 8 p.m. (13-hour-day startup life, I love you so) I was too tired for culinary creativity. So…I blew my calorie allowance, missed my invitation to finally try a Zumba class with my friend Amy D., and tossed my newfound pantry prudence out the window in favor of joining my husband in the demise of not one, but both Trader Joe’s mushroom flatbreads we had in the freezer. Then we plopped in front of the “terriblevision” for an episode of Big Bang Theory. Whoops. (Hey, in fairness, it was 10 degrees out, who didn’t want comfort food yesterday?)
- Whole wheat english muffin with neufchatel & blackberry jam
- 4 cups of coffee
- 1 clementine oranges
- My last Joint Juice
- Leftover 3-bean quinoa chicken chili
- 3 oz Cabot reduced fat cheddar
- Handful of chipotle cheddar Pretzel Crisps (spicy!)
- 1 Multi-Green Synergy Kombucha tea
- 1 Archer Farms cherry-lime twisted fruit leather ropes
- 1/2 a Trader Joe’s wild mushroom & black truffle flatbread
- 1/2 a Trader Joe’s Tarte D’Champignon
- 1 package Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters
Today, I managed to do a bit better, but you know how real peanut butter settles and all the oil pools on top? Well, while stirring it, I managed to ruin one of my favorite Free People tops by splashing gobs of it down the front. I still slathered it on toast with local honey for breakfast, but the dry cleaning bill may make today’s savings a wash (pun intended) unless I can dye it.
Also, I (sniffle) had to completely toss yet another quart of mixed greens because they’d gone bad. I’m finally learning that salad is something I’m just going to have to set aside a takeout budget for in the winter, because I just look at it daily in the fridge and think “Cold food, nooooooooo!” and then the greens eventually go bad, $5 in the rubbish with them, every time.
BURNED
Especially since I missed my workout yesterday, I was bummed I flew past 1800 calories…but I’m still below the national average of 2K a Day, so I won’t beat myself up so much. (Plus, today I’m on target to be well below 1500, but the DailyBurn app is on the fritz, so we’ll just call it even.)
LEARNED
I ate my last clementine today, and immediately started to miss fresh fruit. Thankfully, I still have a half dozen limes left…
We have mice in the office threatening to eat my stash! I’m not in again until Monday, so we’ll see what remains…
…and, speaking of work, my friend Alli offered to swap me some groceries for my Betsey Johnson cocktail dress listed on our new Swap.com Market. Is that cheating? Or just extending the reach of “using what I have”?
Also, I’m completely out of Joint Juice, and on the day where I was actually starting to feel the positive effects the glucosamine and chondroitin were having on my arthritic, old-skating-injury-suffering knees, hips, and elbows…forcing me to question whether supplements count as groceries or medicine. What do you think?
I also learned (yet again) that I love my neighbors, Jen and Tom, who invited me for sushi night and are letting me swap my miso soup packets from the drawer for some of their rice (to go with my General Tsao’s chicken leftovers) and some spicy tuna maki.
Speaking of, I’m late for dinner! Until tomorrow, Gumshoes — I’m working from home and planning to kick some butt with a little P90X Kenpo in the morning and then take a long ass lunch….
Story & in-line images: Copyright 2012, Shoestring LLC.
Lead image: Shutterstock.com